Not a Fairytale (12 page)

We wait, the always-warm oven and me. To hear some stray, small person’s juicy-pink lips, someone’s lickable white milk teeth nibbling at my chocolate windows.

When Salena was born, she had black hair, dark as midnight, and eyes grey-blue as a turbulent sea. Her mother, while disappointed at the birth of a daughter, was glad that at least the girl looked white. Imagine her displeasure when, within weeks, Salena’s eyes turned green, her hair a rusty brown. At least her skin stayed fair.

Hafsa soon grew irritated with the child, wishing her away as she prepared for another pregnancy, a replacement for the disappointment.

Salena learnt early that neglect was preferable to being beaten, and that submission ensured neglect, so as a little girl she bit her tongue and cut her flesh until her body became perfectly silent.

In fact, Salena stayed silent for several decades. But she did speak up, eventually.

Let me tell you her story.

S
ALENA
’
S FATHER
, H
ANIF
P
ARUK
,
HAS A NEW
V
OLVO
, and they’re leaving Cape Town to visit the Cango Caves in Oudtshoorn. There is an air of festivity in the car that not even the bruises on Salena’s waxen arms can diminish. Faruk sits in the front, next to their father, and Salena and her mother, Hafsa, have the back seat. The car smells of padkos, especially the garlic chutney Hanif insists Hafsa spread on all his sandwiches, no matter what the filling. He even eats it with peanut butter.

No one speaks as Hanif concentrates on driving. Occasionally he lets Faruk change gears – it’s never too early for a boy to learn how to drive.

They stop at a garage for petrol and for Hafsa to use the toilet. Hafsa comes back, adjusting her scarf and complaining about the state of the toilets. She tells Salena that at the next garage she must ask for the toilet key so that they can be sure to get the ones to the white toilets.

Salena, seated in the back seat, shifts until she can see her face in the car’s rear-view mirror. She looks at her skin, chalky white, her eyes the colour of marbles. Her hair, in its two plaits, has an auburn glow, and her nose is short and narrow. This face, this reflection, dooms her to playing white on family excursions, or whenever her parents demand it.

She is the third in the queue at the Caves. If she fails, she knows she’ll get another hiding with the belt, or her father’s other favourite, the wooden spoon. Ahead of her are a mother and three children. The children, two boys and a girl, turn to stare at Salena. Her cheeks redden. Can they see she’s not white?

She looks away, then back. The children are barefoot. The boys have shorn hair, showing their pink scalps, and the girl’s hair is blonde, waist-length and horribly knotted. Their faces are smeared with strawberry jam and dirt.

When it’s her turn, she smiles politely at the woman selling tickets and asks for tickets for two children and two grown-ups, in what Hafsa calls “high English”. The woman smiles back, hands her the tickets, and says she is lucky; this is the last tour of the day.

She goes back to the car, parked out of sight of the ticket counter, and gives her father the tickets. In her absence, Salena’s mother has added more white powder to her face, so her dark skin glints grey. She’s freshened her pale pink lipstick too, and removed her scarf. Her thick black hair, most of it artificial, is arranged on top of her head like Elizabeth Taylor’s.

Off they go, up the path. They are the last to join the queue. Hanif hands over the tickets to the collector. He scrutinises each member of the family.

“This tour is for whites only.”

Her mother’s face, under its pale guise, begins to melt in the rays of the afternoon sun.

“Go, before you get into trouble, just go! I want to get home early for a change.”

The family turn as one, back to the car. As they drive away, Faruk is crying. Salena can’t understand why. Their father hardly ever hits him. She feels queasy. She puts her head out of the car window and leaves a trail of padkos in the dusty road.

Masala Peanuts

½ cup chana flour, sifted

¼ cup rice flour, sifted

1½ tsp chilli powder

salt to taste

1 cup salted roasted peanuts

5 tbsp water

oil for frying

Mix the sifted chana flour, rice flour, chilli powder and salt together in a bowl. Stir in the peanuts and slowly add 4 or 5 tablespoons of water. Heat the oil in a pan and drop the peanut mixture into the hot oil. Separate the peanuts that clump together. Deep-fry over medium heat until the peanuts are golden brown. Allow to cool and place in an airtight container. The perfect snack for long car trips.

T
HE MIDNIGHT WAVES WASH OVER
S
ALENA
’
S
feet as she lies on her back in the sand, watching the full moon, a sallow reflection of the sun. She wishes the moon, her namesake, could reach down and pull her up into its heavens.

At the library, she read that a man had walked on the moon, and in her last year of primary school she was taught that the moon affects the tides, that it exerts a pull on the seas, on water.

The beach is Salena’s refuge from her father’s rages. She knows the routine: grab Zuhra and her bottle as well as a handful of the biscuits her mother keeps on a shelf near the back door, and run. Across the main road, past the Catholic school, to the stony beach.

She hears the giggles of her two-year-old sister. The baby is trying to catch the white foam on the black waves with her left hand while holding her milk bottle high in her right one. Little Zuhra doesn’t understand that people don’t visit the beach at this time. She does not know yet that water is treacherous, that there are sea monsters living in the dark, watching from below. She does not know that the butter-yellow midnight moon is natural light to predators, and should not be witnessed by children on a dark beach.

Salena recalls, as a tiny child, perhaps as little as Zuhra is now, being protected in her daadi’s arms, while around her the storm that is her father raged. Now with her grandmother gone, she is her sister’s rescuer. Salena tries to rise, but her arms are as limp as the seaweed strewn on the sand, her body as fluid as the water.

She collapses back onto the sand, spreads her arms out wide, and gazes up at the opaque clouds moving across the moon’s crust. Her hand closes around the sharp edge of a broken shell. She tightens her fist around it until the skin yields, and the moon is witness to the blood mixing with sand.

S
ALENA TREADS SOFTLY ON THE STONE PAVEMENT
in the dark morning, past the row of cottages and storefronts that separates her father’s house from his cornershop, Hanif Paruk General Dealer.

The street lamp throws its bleak light on the tiny keyholes of the padlocks that guard the shop each night. The keys grate, opening a shadowy world of sweets and cigarettes. She reaches for the broom to sweep away the musty night, readying herself for the deliveries of hot bread and icy milk.

She thinks of her parents, undisturbed, asleep beneath their mirrored gudri. It has been her job to open the shop, every day, for two years now, ever since her thirteenth birthday.

That birthday morning had been a gloomy winter one, too. She’d heard the black telephone ringing at seven o’clock, as she was ironing her school pinafore, dark red cotton, dampened to smooth the iron’s path. Her father had answered, and then, with a surprised, silent scowl, handed the receiver to her.

Her quivering ear heard a boy’s voice wishing her happy birthday, a short laugh, a click as he replaced the receiver. She turned to face her parents’ glares.

Later, at school, Mrs Goosen pinched her twice for not concentrating, and made her sit at her desk during break, writing, “I will listen to my teacher, I will listen to my teacher,” one hundred times.

That afternoon she walked into the house and sniffed the air for her mother’s mood, heard her twelve-year-old brother’s squeaky voice tormenting her cat, then felt her eyes brimming even before her mother’s words.

“You think now you’re in high school you can become ougat? I spoke to your father, and we decided no more school for you! If you’re old enough for boyfriends, you’re old enough to work in the shop full-time. Your father’s right: you’ll only bring shame on us.”

Two years later, she is an expert at her duties. When the bread and milk arrive, she counts the loaves and hands over payment, and dries the sweat off the glass milk bottles. Mr Paul arrives for his usual three “losse Stuyvesants” and his customary “Don’t forget to smile” goodbye. He’s followed by the local sweet-factory workers, the smell of sugar cloying on their clothes. Then, before the school bell rings out from across the road, runny-nosed children hurry in to buy “bread on the book and a piece of butter too”.

Finally, the factory workers have left to clock in, the children are imprisoned behind school desks, and it is time to get ready for the next round of buying, at teatime.

She divides the pink penny polony for sandwiches and boils eggs while she butters the rolls they will fill. Then she stocks the fridge with bottles of Coke and ginger beer, pumps paraffin into plastic bottles, unpacks boxes of chips and puts more cans of beans on the shelves.

As she works she thinks of Hafsa’s casually dropped comment the previous night. “I think it’s time we find a husband for you, before you disgrace us again. When you have your own children you’ll see how difficult they can be – just you wait.”

Her chores done, she glances out of the window and notices the moon, still visible in the morning sky. She thinks of her flimsy body stretching to encompass an unwanted stranger and shudders, and wraps her skinny arms around herself.

Coke Float

2 scoops vanilla ice-cream

250 ml Coke

Put two scoops of ice-cream into a tall glass, and top up with Coke until the mixture foams and spills onto the counter top. Quickly lick the excess off the sides of the glass and clean up the mess. If your mother catches you in the act, run for your life and blame the cat!